not the person. 'Good, sir,'
says the mercer to him tauntingly, 'are you a justice of peace or a
constable? I charged you with her; pray do you do your duty.' The
constable told him, a little moved, but very handsomely, 'I know my
duty, and what I am, sir; I doubt you hardly know what you are doing.'
They had some other hard words, and in the meantime the journeyman,
impudent and unmanly to the last degree, used me barbarously, and one
of them, the same that first seized upon me, pretended he would search
me, and began to lay hands on me. I spit in his face, called out to
the constable, and bade him to take notice of my usage. 'And pray, Mr.
Constable,' said I, 'ask that villain's name,' pointing to the man.
The constable reproved him decently, told him that he did not know what
he did, for he knew that his master acknowledged I was not the person
that was in his shop; 'and,' says the constable, 'I am afraid your
master is bringing himself, and me too, into trouble, if this
gentlewoman comes to prove who she is, and where she was, and it
appears that she is not the woman you pretend to.' 'Damn her,' says
the fellow again, with a impudent, hardened face, 'she is the lady, you
may depend upon it; I'll swear she is the same body that was in the
shop, and that I gave the pieces of satin that is lost into her own
hand. You shall hear more of it when Mr. William and Mr. Anthony
(those were other journeymen) come back; they will know her again as
well as I.'

Just as the insolent rogue was talking thus to the constable, comes
back Mr. William and Mr. Anthony, as he called them, and a great rabble
with them, bringing along with them the true widow that I was pretended
to be; and they came sweating and blowing into the shop, and with a
great deal of triumph, dragging the poor creature in the most butcherly
manner up towards their master, who was in the back shop, and cried out
aloud, 'Here's the widow, sir; we have catcher her at last.' 'What do
ye mean by that?' says the master. 'Why, we have her already; there
she sits,' says he, 'and Mr. ----,' says he, 'can swear this is she.'
The other man, whom they called Mr. Anthony, replied, 'Mr. ---- may say
what he will, and swear what he will, but this is the woman, and
there's the remnant of satin she stole; I took it out of her clothes
with my own hand.'

I sat still now, and began to take a better heart, but smiled and said
nothing; the master looked pale; the constabl